Fifty years ago, the findings of “The Rockefeller Commission Report on Population Growth and the American Future” was published. One year later, it got what it wanted when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion. It is important to understand the role of the ruling class in making Roe v. Wade possible.

The process began on July 18, 1969 when President Richard Nixon established a body to examine the effects of population growth on America’s future. On March 27, 1972, John D. Rockefeller 3rd, chairman of the Commission, transmitted the Final Report to the president and the Congress.

The plea to legalize abortion was a foregone conclusion: the commission was stacked with pro-abortion members. In 1967, the chairman, John D. Rockefeller 3rd, was the recipient of Planned Parenthood’s highest honor when he accepted the Margaret Sanger Award; the award was named after the white supremacist founder of Planned Parenthood.

John D. Rockefeller 3rd followed in the footsteps of John D. Rockefeller Jr. “Junior,” as he was called, provided funding for eugenics, giving money to the Germans. Some of it was put to use by the Nazis.

The Commission staff was headed by Dr. Charles F. Westoff. He was a member of the American Eugenics Society and Planned Parenthood’s National Advisory Council. One of the Commission’s Special Consultants was Daniel Callahan, a pro-abortion eugenicist who tried desperately to convince Catholics of the merits of abortion and eugenics. When he failed he quit the Church.

In chapter 11, titled “Human Reproduction,” the Final Report did not hide the pro-abortion sentiments of the Commission. “A few of the members of the Commission are opposed to abortion.” It also said “the majority” are not.

The number-one population problem in the early 1970s, the Commission said, was “unwanted births.” It admitted that only “one percent of first births were never wanted.” So where’s the problem? It found that “nearly two-thirds of all sixth or higher order births” were unwanted. That sounds plausible but that hardly constitutes a crisis. How many women, even back then, had six or more kids?

It has been historically true that those who can least afford to have children tend to have the most, and vice versa. So it made sense that the Commission would find that “Unwanted fertility is highest among those whose levels of education and income are lowest.” This, they said, leads to psychological, economic and health problems. “The Commission believes that all Americans, regardless of age, marital status, or income, should be enabled to avoid unwanted births.”

The solution to this alleged problem was to (a) allow minors to receive contraception information and services (b) eliminate restrictions on sterilization and (c) liberalize abortion laws on the state level. Regarding the latter, much of its reasoning was based on faulty information.

The Commission maintained that there were between “200,000 and 1,200,000 illegal abortions per year in the United States.” In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that in 1972, “130,000 women obtained illegal or self-induced procedures, 39 of whom died.” In other words, the Commission’s estimates were way off base, and so were the horror stories about all the women who died in “back-alley” abortions.

The Commission was also wrong when it contended that “with the increasing availability of contraceptives and improvements in contraceptive technology, the need for abortion will diminish.” We now know that following Roe v. Wade both contraceptive use and abortion rates increased dramatically.

If there is one demographic segment of the population that the Rockefeller Commission believed was a problem, it was African Americans.

The Report said that “if blacks could have the number of children they want and no more, their fertility and that of the majority white population would be very similar.” The goal could not be more plain: get blacks to stop reproducing. What they need, the Report said, was greater access to “the various means of fertility control.”

Some of the Commission members cited Planned Parenthood’s efforts to meet this goal. Mission accomplished: It was reported in 2020 that Planned Parenthood locates 86% of its abortion clinics in or near minority neighborhoods. Though blacks are 13% of the population, they account for one-third of all abortions.

At one point in the Final Report it says, “We share with our fellow citizens an abiding concern for the sanctity of all human life,” and therefore “we appreciate the moral decisions involved in abortion.” It hastened to add that it shares “a deep commitment to individual freedom and social justice,” making clear that this issue was paramount.

The Commission obviously did not have “an abiding concern for the sanctity of all human life,” for if it did it would not argue for the legalization of abortion. It should be noted that in 1963, Planned Parenthood actually admitted that “An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.”

Abortion has always been one of the ruling class’ preferred methods of solving “the urban problem.” The Rockefellers epitomized this WASP solution. It teed up Roe v. Wade 50 years ago, making it easier for Supreme Court Justices to rationalize its abortion-on-demand ruling.

There are two religious liberty cases before the federal courts that have much in common: (a) both evince a clear animus against Christianity, and (b) they emanate from the most militantly secular states in the nation, Oregon and Washington.

The Oregon case will be appealed to the Supreme Court; the Washington case will be decided in the spring by the high court.

In 2013, the Court of Appeals in Oregon ruled that Aaron and Melissa Klein, who owned a bakeshop in Gresham, discriminated against a lesbian couple, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, when they refused to make a wedding cake for them. The evangelical couple did so on religious grounds, citing Leviticus for support.

The lesbians filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor. It said the Christians violated Oregon’s accommodations statute barring discrimination based on sexual discrimination. The panel ordered them to pay $135,000 in damages. The bakery owners appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals in 2016, but they lost again. Then they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2019, the high court vacated the ruling and sent it back to the state court of appeals for reconsideration. It cited its ruling in a similar case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, (which was decided favorably to the religious liberty side), for review.

On January 26th, 2022, the Oregon appeals court told the Bureau of Labor to reconsider its order fining the Christian couple. It said that the state agency “acted non-neutrally” against them. But it insisted that the couple was still guilty of discriminating against the lesbians.

Attorneys for First Liberty Institute, joined by former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, will appeal this ruling, arguing that the same agency that showed an anti-Christian bias should not be allowed to try this case one more time. They maintain that the appeals court should have put an end to this case once and for all.

The appeals court showed cowardice when it said that the state agency “acted non-neutrally.” This sanitized term is a ruse: it would be more accurate to say that flagrantly anti-Christian remarks were voiced by some on the panel.

The lawyers for the Christians contended that the panel’s “administrative prosecutor disparaged” their client, labeling their objections a mere “excuse” for discrimination. They also unjustly compared their clients’ objections to cases involving “physical violence, prolonged sexual harassment, and religious coercion.” The bakery owners were even enjoined from “speaking about their religious beliefs, despite the lack of any basis for such a gag order.”

The Washington case involves a football coach, Joseph Kennedy, who huddled with players for a prayer on the 50-yard-line after games at Bremerton High School, outside of Seattle.
When he was asked by school officials not to lead the players in a prayer, he complied. When he decided to take a knee and say a silent prayer with the players, the school objected again, saying students could see him praying. Finally, the school banned prayer altogether.

The school said that if he wants to pray he should do so in a janitor’s closet or the press box; this way no one would construe his behavior to be a government-endorsed event. He refused, citing his First Amendment rights. The school fired him.

Kennedy sued and twice lost before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that public speech of “an overtly religious nature” is forbidden, arguing that doing so gives the impression that the government is endorsing religion. Kennedy’s First Liberty attorneys charged that the Ninth Circuit was now saying that “even private religious speech by teachers and coaches violates the Establishment Clause (italic in the original).”

Kennedy has appealed to the Supreme Court but the justices declined the case; they asked the lower courts to review it. Now the Supreme Court has decided to hear the latest appeal.

Jeremy Dys, the First Liberty attorney for Kennedy, argued that the Ninth Circuit ruling sets a dangerous precedent. It would call into question whether “a public-school employee has a constitutional right to engage in brief, quiet prayer by himself (his italic.)”

Furthermore, if this ruling were to stand, it would mean that a teacher who bowed his head before a meal in the school cafeteria, or wore a crucifix or yarmulke, could be fired for giving the appearance of government endorsement of religion.

President Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who represents the school board, frames the issue in a patently dishonest way. “No child attending public school should have to pray to play school sports.” She’s right about that, but it is a red herring: No student is being compelled to pray as a condition of playing sports in any public school in the nation.

These two cases are driven by a hatred of Christianity, and that is why they have been banging around in the courts for so long. The totalitarian left, which occupies a sizeable presence in Oregon and Washington (home to the crazed 2020 Portland and Seattle riots), must be stopped if liberty is to prevail.

The January 15th episode of “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) was vile.

“Pope Francis said this week that getting vaccinated against Covid is a moral obligation especially since priests work so closely with kids.”

The writers could have chosen to make a nasty joke about blacks, but that would have violated its policy on “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.” It could have made a nasty joke about Asians, but that would have violated this policy. It could have made a nasty joke about transgender persons, but that would have violated this policy. It could have made a nasty joke about homosexuals, but that would have violated this policy. It could have made a nasty joke about the disabled, but that would have violated this policy.

So it chose to nail Catholics, and that is because they are not covered by this policy.

“We stand for everyone. We believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive company is a more effective company, leading us to approach diversity as a driver for business growth and innovation.”

That is the opening statement issued by NBCUniversal on its policy governing “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.” It is also a lie. Its policy only covers “injustice and inequality against any race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ability.”

Why are religious groups left out? Because the company obviously doesn’t value them. And why were Catholics the butt of the joke, and not some other religious entity? Because “Saturday Night Live” writers hate Catholics. No other reason is plausible.

Fr. Pat Conroy, a Jesuit, is the former House Chaplain; he left that post in 2019. He is back in the news, this time for giving the green light to Catholics to be pro-abortion. Much of what he said in a Washington Post interview on January 5 is uninformed, and some of his comments are simply wrong.

“I want to know the American who thinks government should take away their choice in any area of their life—any area of their life (newspaper’s italic).”

That’s not hard to do. Simply read the surveys that reveal the support for Covid lockdowns—millions support allowing the government to take away the choices of citizens. Alternatively, go to Princeton or Yale and interview the administrators who are creating a police state environment in the name of combatting the flu.

Conroy says, “A good Catholic in our system could be saying: Given women in our system have this constitutional right, our task as fellow Christians, or as Catholics, is to make possible for her to optimize her ability to make the choice.”

Let us pose an analogy, using slavery as the object of choice. “A good Catholic in our system could be saying: Given citizens in our system have this constitutional right [to slavery], our task as fellow Christians, or as Catholics, is to make it possible for them to optimize their ability to make the choice.”

Conroy insists that “a pro-choice Democrat isn’t a pro-abortion person.” Tell that to the pro-abortion protesters who were in the news recently holding signs that said, “I Love Someone Who Had An Abortion.”

Similarly, Conroy says about the woman planning to abort her child, “she is the one to make her choice; we should not make it for her.” But choice is a verb that has no moral meaning. It only takes on meaning when we know the object of choice. A doctor who chooses to bring life into the world is a good man. A doctor who chooses to kill it is not.

Conroy opines that “Thomas Aquinas says if your conscience says to do something the church says is a sin, you are bound to follow your conscience. That’s Thomas Aquinas!”

That is a highly selective reading of Aquinas.

To be sure, Aquinas prized conscience rights, but he did so with the understanding that it must be a well formed conscience. If it were not, then all choices, no matter how murderous, could be countenanced. Which explains why he said, “If…we consider one action in the moral order, it is impossible for it to be morally both good and evil.”

It is wrong to suggest that Aquinas said that conscience rights override Church teachings. “The universal Church,” he said, “cannot err, since she is governed by the Holy Ghost, Who is the Spirit of truth.” He also said, “Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.”

Regarding abortion, Aquinas said that abortions are a “grave sin” and were not only “among evil deeds,” they were “against nature.” In the 12th century, science had not yet learned that life begins at conception, which is why Aquinas accepted the prevailing view that life begins at some time after fertilization. But that didn’t stop him from condemning abortion.

If liberal Catholics regarded abortion to be as morally offensive as racial discrimination—it is actually much worse—they would not strain to justify it. That they continue to do so while feigning an interest in social justice is positively nauseating.

It is legal to burn the American flag in Boston (and elsewhere), and it is legal to display the flags of Communist nations in front of Boston’s City Hall, but it is illegal to raise a Christian flag in the same spot. That may be changing once the Supreme Court rules on this case in June.

The justices recently heard oral argument on this case, and it didn’t go well for Boston officials. The position put forth by Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, representing Boston, appeared lame. Even some liberals on the high court seemed unimpressed.

A closer look at what he said is troubling: it suggests that either city officials are badly educated on the First Amendment, or they harbor an animus against Christianity.
City officials in Boston are used to people making requests to fly celebratory flags outside City Hall. For example, Gay Pride flags are flown. Most of the requests, however, are to fly the flag of a foreign nation.

Boston granted 284 consecutive requests until it finally said no to one. It said no to a man who wanted to fly a “Christian flag” (it bears a Latin cross).

For the justices, the key issue was clear cut: either the flagpole represents a public forum where private parties can express themselves, or whether raising these flags conveys government endorsement of their message. If it’s the former, then city officials cannot deny the Christian flag from being flown; if it’s the latter, they can.

The lawyer for the city argued that Boston would be endorsing Christianity if it allowed the Christian flag to be flown. He admitted that religious symbols are inscribed on some nation’s flags, but city officials believed that was different: the flag’s message was about the nation, not religion. But was he right to say that the establishment clause of the First Amendment prohibited the flying of a Christian flag?

Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch all indicated that it may be a “mistake” to see this issue as a violation of the establishment clause, and that if that is the case, then it ends the discussion.

“Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The latter clearly says that the government cannot stop the free exercise of religion. The former, according to Boston city officials, means that flying the Christian flag outside City Hall is tantamount to government endorsement of it.

Are there really two clauses here, serving two different ends? That is what the city of Boston believes. But to the Framers, the two clauses serve to facilitate one end: religious liberty. That being the case, there is no need to “balance” one against the other, and it is wrong to see them as oppositional, as if they were written to cancel each other out.

The article “an” is important. It takes on more meaning when we understand what Madison, who wrote the First Amendment, said about it. By “an establishment of religion” he meant a national church, such as the Church of England. In addition, he said, government could not show preference for one religion over another. That was it.

From the oral argument, it is possible to deduce that Boston officials are using the establishment clause as a ruse: it may be that they are simply against the public expression of religion.

Justice Samuel Alito noted that the original Boston policy on flag flying did not list any reasons why a request could be denied. After the Christian flag was denied, it was decided not to grant requests for flags that were “discriminatory, inappropriate or religious.” Alito charged that in doing so, “you’ve reverse engineered.”

“We want to create an environment in which everyone feels included.” That is what the Boston attorney said. But by denying a Christian flag, does that not send a message that Christians are not included?

The city’s lawyer also said, “Our goal is to foster diversity by celebrating the communities within Boston.” Justice Clarence Thomas jumped on this admission, saying, “You mentioned diversity several times, and what I don’t understand is your definition of diversity because it would seem to me that Christians in Boston would be a part of that diversity calculus.”

The Boston case was made harder when several justices said the city’s policy amounted to “viewpoint discrimination.”
What happened during oral argument is commonplace these days. The words “diversity and inclusion” roll off the lips of those on the left as a mantra. They mean nothing. They mean nothing because they rarely seem to apply to those who hold to traditional moral values. If anything, they are used as a weapon against them.

In 1963, the Supreme Court, in Abington v. Schempp, ruled that “the State may not establish a ‘religion of secularism’ in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion.” Seems apropos.

The generous interpretation of this case is that Boston officials need to get up to speed on the meaning of the First Amendment. A less generous one suggests that their real goal is to censor the public expression of Christianity.

Bill Donohue explains why he wrote the letter found here.

Over the past several years, I have written many pieces on how some in the media have been manipulating Pope Francis. But the scheming is not confined to the media.

The latest example comes by way of New Ways Ministry (NWM), a disloyal Catholic outfit that has been the focal point of numerous sanctions from Church authorities, both in Rome and in the United States. It explicitly rejects Church teachings on marriage, the family and sexuality, especially homosexuality.

In October, the Vatican formally announced the beginning of a two-year program, the Synod on Synodality, that would allow Catholics to participate in a dialogue with Church officials on matters of importance to them. The Vatican’s Synod of Bishops posted a resource page that provides links to a webinar for participating parties.

One of the groups that sought participation was NWM; it succeeded in obtaining a link to the webinar. However, when loyal Catholics complained that it was a heretical group, the link was taken down on December 7. After disloyal Catholics complained, the link was restored on December 13.

On December 15, I wrote a letter to Cardinal Mario Grech, General Secretary of the Synod of Bishops; it was sent by fax that day and arrived via express mail on December 17. Confirmation that the fax was received was dated December 21.

Cardinal Grech did not reply by January 10. I then decided to go public with my statement. My letter is on the opposite page.

Letters by Pope Francis commending NWM have now surfaced. On December 10, the pope wrote a short note to Sister Jeannine Gramick thanking her for her 50 years of ministry; she co-founded NWM in 1977 with Fr. Robert Nugent. Last spring, two letters of correspondence were exchanged between the pope and Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of NWM.

On May 3, 2021 Pope Francis wrote to DeBernardo about his letter of April 21. “It helped me a lot to know the full story you tell me,” the pope said. “Sometimes we receive partial information about people and organizations, and this doesn’t help. Your letter, as it narrates with objectivity its history, gives me light to better understand certain situations.”

It is painfully obvious that the pope does not have “the full story.” Indeed, he has been manipulated once again.

In his letter to the pope, did DeBernardo tell him why Washington Archbishop James Hickey barred NWM officials in 1984 from continuing their “service” to the Church? He did so following numerous complaints that Gramick and Nugent had infiltrated the seminaries, openly defying Church teachings on homosexuality.

Did he tell the pope why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was pressed into starting an 11-year investigation of NWM? They did so because Gramick and Nugent refused to accept the Church’s teaching regarding “the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts and the objective disorder of the homosexual inclination.” That is why when the probe was finished in 1999, they were told to stop with their “ministry.”

Nothing has changed since. Indeed, on January 7, 2022, Gramick said that in 1999 the Vatican wanted her and Nugent “to say that homosexual activity is objectively immoral and that we personally believed that. And I could not say that.”

Did DeBernardo tell the pope that Gramick praised the biggest pervert priest in American history, Father Paul Shanley? He raped males of all ages and he did so for decades. He liked to blame children for his perversion, famously saying, “the kid is the seducer.”

In 2005, Gramick said she was horrified by Shanley’s behavior but that she “grieved for this man I had not seen in almost 20 years, but whose principles and whose advocacy for the downtrodden I had applauded for three decades.” Journalist Maureen Orth was horrified by what Gramick said, adding that she interviewed nine of Shanley’s victims. Gramick never spoke to one of them.

We know what Pope Francis has said about marriage—it should be confined to a man and a woman in the institution of marriage. We know that he has called gay marriage the work of “the father of lies,” meaning the devil. We know that he has advised men with “deep-rooted” homosexual tendencies not to enter the priesthood. We know that he has warned against the “gay lobby” in the Church. We know that he regards gender ideology—that men and women can switch their sex—to be “demonic.”

We also know that neither Gramick nor DeBernardo believe a lick of what the pope has said.

In 2015, when Pope Francis visited the U.S., many disloyal Catholic groups sought to meet with him, one of these was NWM. They were rightfully denied. Loyal Catholics did meet with him (I did so on September 23).

On October 9, 2021, Pope Francis gave an address about the opening of the Synod. Quoting Yves Congar O.P., he said, “There is no need to create another church, but to create a different church.” True enough. NWM wants another church, not a different one.

Loyal Catholics need clarity from Rome about this issue.

Your Eminence:

As president of the largest Catholic civil rights organization in the United States, my job is to defend individual Catholics against discrimination and the institutional Church from defamation. The latter ineluctably involves a defense of Church teachings and strictures.

I am writing to you because recent news reports indicate that your communications manager, Thierry Bonaventura, has announced that he has restored a link to New Ways Ministry’s (NWM) webinar on synodality that had been taken down following considerable criticism. Moreover, he has extended an apology to NWM.

Like so many other Catholics, we were surprised to learn that a video by a dissident organization—one that has been summarily rebuked by the Vatican and the U.S. bishops for decades—would be accepted by the Vatican as a legitimate Catholic contribution to the synodal consultations. We were relieved when this post was taken down. You can imagine how we felt when it was restored. Worse was an apology to an organization that not only has no standing in the Catholic Church—it actively seeks to undermine it.

What I have said is not a matter of opinion.

I am sending via fax and the U.S. mail a copy of the “Notification Regarding Sister Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Father Robert Nugent, SDS,” a publication of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (pope emeritus) in 1999.

Ratzinger noted that in 1984, “James Cardinal Hickey, the Archbishop of Washington, following the failure of a number of attempts at clarification, informed them [NWM] that they could no longer undertake their activities in that Archdiocese. At the same time, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life ordered them to separate themselves totally and completely from New Ways Ministry, adding that they were not to exercise any apostolate without faithfully presenting the Church’s teaching regarding the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts.”

Ratzinger then detailed the many attempts by Church officials to persuade Gramick and Nugent to abide by Church teachings on this subject. He concluded that they “are permanently prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons and are ineligible, for an undetermined period, for any office in their respective religious institutes.”

Three years later, in 2002, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote that “New Ways Ministry does not promote the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church.”

In that same year, Archbishop Thomas Kelly of Louisville told organizers of the group’s conference that they should not celebrate the Eucharist at the NWM event. Following suit in 2007 was St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop Harry Flynn: he barred NWM’s national conference from celebrating the Eucharist.

In 2010, Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated that he can assure Catholics that “in no manner is the position proposed by New Ways Ministry in conformity with Catholic teaching and in no manner is this organization authorized to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church or to identify itself as a Catholic organization.”

In 2011, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Washington Archdiocese, and chairman of the Committee on Doctrine, joined with Oakland Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, and chairman of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on the Defense of Marriage, issuing an affirmation of Cardinal George’s denunciation of NWM.

Were all of these senior members of the Catholic Church wrong about NWM? Or is the decision to welcome them to the syndoal process wrong? They can’t both be right.

I would like to know by January 10 what your response is. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

The Catholic League’s headquarters is located directly across the street from Penn Station and Macy’s in New York City. Every Christmas season we look forward to The Salvation Army men and women in uniform ringing their bells, and frequently dancing to Christmas music, aside their red kettles, collecting money for the needy. Unfortunately, there have been some organizational changes that gave lots of people pause this past Christmas season.

As always, it is the elites who are the problem. The average volunteer is just as good as ever, doing God’s work.

In the spring of last year, the International Salvation Army issued a lengthy report, “Let’s Talk About Racism,” that is aimed at everyone associated with the organization. It is meant as a discussion guide.

Part of it is commendable: Scripture is frequently cited on the need to treat everyone equally, regardless of race. But it is interposed with the same kind of critical race theory polemics that is cause for concern all across the nation. Instead of combating racism, it is unwittingly contributing to it.

The report is no longer available on the internet, but we obtained a copy before it was taken down by The Salvation Army. It was taken down because of the backlash the report engendered. On Thanksgiving Day, the top brass issued a statement, “The Salvation Army’s Response to False Claims on the Topic of Racism.” This was simply dishonest.

Instead of apologizing for adopting the politics of the hard-core left, the elites doubled down by lashing out at its critics.

“They [the critics] have claimed that we believe our donors should apologize for their skin color, that The Salvation Army believes America is an inherently racist society, and that we have abandoned our Christian faith for one ideology or another. Those claims are simply false, and they distort the very goal of our work.” Not so fast.

In the Introduction to the report, on page 3, advice is given to their flock, or what they call Salvationists. One of the items suggest that they “Lament, repent and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed (our italic).” This is more than an assumption: throughout the document, as will be detailed, the understanding is that white people are racists, thus necessitating the need to “apologize.”

It is similarly disingenuous to say that the critics are wrong when they say that “The Salvation Army believes America is an inherently racist society.” On page 3 in Appendix D, it explicitly says of America that “Our foundations were built on racism, and it is still strongly felt in every aspect of American life.” There is no other way to read that other than to say that “America is an inherently racist society.”

While it would be unfair to say The Salvation Army has “abandoned [its] Christian faith for one ideology or another,” it is true that its deep dive into critical race theory has created several blind spots. For example, on page 1, Appendix A, it offers a morally neutral interpretation of the Affordable Care Act.

One would expect that a Christian organization would at least mention, if not condemn, the ObamaCare healthcare mandate forcing religious nonprofits, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, to include abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plan. But there is no such mention.

It is abundantly clear that the authors of this report are generally ignorant of both the natural and social sciences. Indeed, it reads like a manifesto, not a document informed by science.

On page 2 of the Introduction, it says race and racism “have no basis in science or biblical thought.” On page 2 of Session One, it says, “Race is not biological. It is a social construct.”

It would be more accurate to say that the consensus in scientific circles is that the term race has both genetic and environmental roots.

A.L. Kroeber, the distinguished cultural anthropologist, was clearly aligned with those who emphasize nurture over nature, yet even he admitted that “race is a valid biological concept.” Furthermore, he studied under the early 20th century anthropologist Franz Boas, who, while adhering to a belief in cultural relativism, nonetheless said that race was “a scientific concept [that] applies only to the biological groupings of human types.”

If race were purely a social construct, why is it that racial groups differ widely on their susceptibility to certain diseases? There is more at work than mere environmental matters when we learn that sickle-cell anemia is more prevalent among African Americans than it is whites.

Why is it that this disease affects 1 in 13 African Americans but only 1 in 100 Hispanic Americans? Sickle-cell anemia is a function of hemoglobin A (HbA), the usual form of hemoglobin, and hemoglobin S (HbS), a variant group. Is hemoglobin a social construct? If it were, then why in Bill Donohue’s doctoral training in sociology was hemoglobin never mentioned?

A more honest approach, to cite one example, is found in an article in the Oct. 26, 2020 medical publication, Stroke. “Identifying Genetic and Biological Determinants of Race-Ethnic Disparities in Stroke in the United States” was authored by five men and women who hold PhDs and MDs. One of their conclusions gets directly to Donohue’s point. “Although the Black-White disparities in stroke have been known for at least a half century,” they write, “only recently have studies focused on biological and genetic factors that contribute to racial disparities in stroke.”

In other words, the notion that race is nothing more than a social construct is plainly false.

In the Introduction, the term racism is given a fairly standard definition, but on page 3, Session One, the report slides into politics. Racism is defined as “The prejudiced treatment, stereotyping or discrimination of POC [People Of Color] on the basis of race.”

If a sociology student of Dr. Donohue’s were to offer this definition, he would fail. Since when does racism apply only to “People Of Color”? According to this definition, “People Of Color” are incapable of being racists. That would mean that Louis Farrakhan, the notorious black anti-Semite, is not a racist. No one believes this save those drunk on ideology.

In reality, the world is not divided between white racists and their victims. Indeed, to imply as such is a prime example of racism. Furthermore, the term “People Of Color” is meaningless. Asians are at the top of the educational and socio-economic scale, and African Americans are at the bottom. So what exactly do they have in common? That they are not white?

On page 5 of the Glossary we learn that a racist is “a person who belongs to a dominant or privileged group that discriminates against people of other races, or someone who believes that a particular race is superior to another.”

The latter part is true, but it is absurd to imply that a person cannot be a racist unless he belongs to “a dominant or privileged group.” Lori Lightfoot is the black mayor of Chicago and she expressly said in May 2021 that she would not grant interviews to white reporters (she rescinded the rule two days later amid a backlash). What she did was racist, and there is no getting around it. She discriminated against white reporters.

It is ironic to note that this report, which was written to combat racism, smacks of racism. The bias against white people is palpable. “Whiteness and White racialized identity refer to the way that White people, their customs, culture and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared.” That is what it says on page 6 of the Glossary.

This is a prime example of racism. Not only is “Whiteness” a contrived slang term designed to denigrate all Caucasians, there is no such thing as white “customs, culture and beliefs.” The customs, culture and beliefs of the Irish are not that of the Ukrainians. For that matter, it is racist to assume that the Chinese and Japanese share the same customs, culture and beliefs. They manifestly do not.

One of the biggest problems with this report—another clear reflection of critical race theory—is the propensity to see racism everywhere. On page 3, Session 4, it labels as an example of “racial inequities” the fact that more blacks have died of COVID-19 than whites.

One reason for this disparity is that the obesity rate among whites is 30.2% and among blacks it is 42.4%. This matters because there is a positive correlation between obesity and COVID-19, meaning the more obese someone is the more likely he is to get the disease.

Similarly, on page 3, Session 2, the report offers as an example of racism the fact that blacks are much more likely to be incarcerated than whites, and that they don’t do nearly as well in school. There is a reason for this: blacks commit an inordinate amount of violent crimes and they score at the bottom in tests measuring educational achievement.

Lest someone think we are implying that blacks are naturally given to crime, or that they are not as intelligent as whites, let us hasten to add that that is not what we mean. Both conditions are easily explainable, and they have nothing to do with race.

It is the family that matters, not race. Men of any race who come from fatherless families are much more likely to be involved in crime, and students who are raised in one-parent families generally do not do as well in school as those raised in two-parent families. For reasons tied to public policies that have undermined the black family—policies advocated by the “anti-racists”—most black kids are raised in female-headed households.

On page 3, Session 4, the report lists George Floyd as a victim of police brutality, and on page 1 Appendix C it lists Michael Brown and Eric Garner (as well as three largely unknown persons) as victims of police racism. Yet in each case there were factors having nothing to do with race that led to their deaths. In the case of Brown, it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the police did nothing wrong. Even the Obama administration’s Department of Justice came to this conclusion.

It is clear that the authors are in over their heads. On page 4, Session 5, they say that it is a problem when people do not intermix with those of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. This is astonishing. They have just unwittingly condemned the Chinese. Wherever they live, they choose to live in “Chinatowns” (quite unlike the Japanese who assimilate). Does this make them racists?

If this isn’t bad enough, the report ends with a list of recommended books on the subject of combating racism, many of which actually promote the very racist ideas that this document promotes.

The Salvation Army elites have done a disservice to this great organization. They need to do more than just withdraw this dreadful report: They need to make a public statement apologizing for the damage they have done to the status of the organization and a pledge never again to succumb to left-wing politics.

Never has religious liberty been more seriously threatened than it is today. That the man responsible for this all-out assault professes to be a Catholic is all the more offensive. It is his Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that are leading the charge.

News of Biden’s latest war on religious liberty was selectively leaked to the media. A draft memo by OCR to HHS indicated the Biden administration was planning to revoke the Trump administration’s policies governing religious liberty, including conscience rights. On December 7, 2021 the Trump era protections were overturned.

HHS, under the leadership of Secretary Xavier Becerra, who has a long record of trampling on religious liberty, has worked in tandem with OCR to gut the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). In his capacity as California Attorney General, he sued the Little Sisters of the Poor for resisting the HHS mandate of the Obama administration; it tried to force the nuns to provide for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans.

OCR has contended that the Trump administration “took an expansive view of the use of RFRA that resulted in negative impacts for underserved communities.” Translated this means that attempts of radical homosexual and transgender activists to impose their secular agenda on religious institutions and agencies were blocked from doing so by the previous administration. The Biden team wants to undo all of that.

We were delighted that Sen. James Lankford called out the Biden administration on this issue. Unfortunately, another news story broke, detailing how matters have only worsened.

Becerra is actively seeking to eviscerate a wide range of religious liberty exemptions that lawmakers and the courts have granted. He is doing an end run around legislators, appealing directly to the courts to satisfy his agenda. In court filings obtained by the Catholic Benefits Association, there is a symbiotic relationship between HHS and radical left-wing activist organizations, the most prominent of which is the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

The evidence shows that transgender rights and abortion rights are being pursued full throttle. Their success depends on the destruction of religious liberty exemptions put in place by the courts, lawmakers and administrative agencies. More than any other entity, it is Catholic institutions that are under the most severe attack.

If Biden gets his way, Catholic doctors and hospitals will lose their autonomy. They will either have to shut down or bend to the anti-Catholic norms of his administration. It’s just that serious.

Currently, no Catholic doctor can be forced to perform gender-transition surgery, and Catholic hospitals can refuse a request by a transgender woman—meaning a man who claims to be a woman—from doing a hysterectomy. Biden wants to change that. He also wants to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. Not to be outdone, Biden wants to deny Catholic hospitals the right not to hire abortionists, doctors who perform abortions.

Biden has also invented a new right: the right of “socially infertile” single persons and homosexual couples to receive fertility treatments. His administration actually believes that these people cannot “reproduce via sexual intercourse due to social factors (our italic).” And what might these social factors be? A “lack of a partner or because of a person’s sexual orientation.”

In other words, it is not biology that stops single people and homosexual couples from having babies—it is society. This is the kind of insanity that happens when nature, and nature’s God, are dismissed and disdained. Regrettably, not only is this nonsense accepted by left-wing organizations, it is embraced by the ruling class, including elites in the healthcare industry. None of them have the guts to call this out for what it is—madness. They are complicit in this contrived universe.

Similarly, denying a woman an abortion, or what Biden prefers to call “termination of pregnancy,” is a matter of sex discrimination. He, and those who work for him, claim that men can also become pregnant. Yet none of them can provide a scintilla of evidence—taken from any country in the history of the world—to verify this baseless claim.

There are several pieces of legislation written by Democrats, such as the Equality Act, that are designed to crush Catholic institutions, but they have been stalled in committee due to their lack of public support. That is why OCR and HHS have elected to bypass Congress and seek court approval for their extremist policies.

The Leadership Conference, which is feeding the Biden team, is comprised of many familiar left-wing organizations. The ACLU, American Atheists, the Anti-Defamation League, the Human Rights Campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for American Progress are all on board. Their hostility to religious liberty in general, and Catholic rights in particular, are well known. What is not widely known is that AARP is a member of this organization. Catholics take note.

We contacted every senator, in both parties, about our concerns and asked our subscribers to contact their senators and voice their objections to this radical agenda.

Congressman Thomas Massie’s Christmas card showed a picture of him and six other members of his family each holding a long gun. The card carries the inscription, “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.” A photo of the card was posted on Twitter on December 4.

Massie was criticized for doing so, drawing the ire of those who say that this card came on the heels of the Michigan school shooting. On December 6, he stood his ground saying he would not delete the photo.

Rep. Massie’s Christmas card was offensive, but not because we believed he intentionally tried to make a statement relative to what happened in Michigan.

The gun imagery was in bad taste. If this needed to be explained, then he has an even bigger problem. Most importantly, it had absolutely nothing to do with honoring the meaning of Christmas.

Throughout the years, we have objected to the dumbing-down of Christmas, using it as a medium to make statements that are extrinsic to the meaning of Christmas. Whether it was a nativity scene with animals in lieu of the Holy Family, or Christmas cards that were nothing more than a family album, the trend has been to relegate the birth of Jesus to a second-class status. That’s why Massie’s contribution was not welcome.

In 2006, Bill Donohue received a Christmas card from President George W. Bush and the First Lady. When asked by the Washington Post if he objected to its secular tone—”Merry Christmas” was noticeably absent—Donohue said that while he did not like it, he assumed all presidents issued some generic Christmas cards. He was wrong.

Reporter Alan Cooperman told him that every president from FDR to Bush’s father had issued at least one card while in office that said “Merry Christmas.” That changed things. The newspaper quoted Donohue saying, “This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture.”

Rep. Massie had plenty of other opportunities throughout the year to sport his guns. Christmas should not have been one of them.